President Trump at the U.N. General Assembly (File photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

"The Trump administration is continuing its curious fixation with rejoining a United Nations 'tourism' agency, amid numerous reasons why the move wouldn't help the U.S. diplomatically or economically...

As we wrote last fall, there are numerous reasons for the United States not to rejoin the U.N. tourism agency, including:

1. The U.S. previously concluded that the organization provided little benefit to us. The U.S. decided to withdraw from the UNWTO in 1995 after conducting a "comprehensive interagency assessment of U.S. membership in all of the international organizations to which it makes assessed contributions" and concluding that U.S. membership in the UNWTO was among three organizations in which U.S. membership was least defensible....
5. UNWTO does not support U.S. policy. The World Tourism Organization has strongly condemned President Donald Trump's visa policy and decision to restore travel restrictions on Cuba. In contrast to the condemnations of U.S. policy, World Tourism Organization Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili stated during a 2018 visit to Iran that his goal was to 'help Iran become more powerful' and reportedly vowed to 'help boost Iran's tourism despite U.S. sanctions.'...
This only serves to underscore the mystery of why the administration wants to invest U.S. taxpayer dollars in an organization that provides poor value for money, has deficient oversight, will not directly benefit U.S. tourism, and sees Trump administration policies as more worthy of criticism than those of Iran."